Road to Portland

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9/11 is Dean and Tammy’s 31st wedding anniversary. To celebrate, the three of us hit McDonald’s for brunch and a little diner for dinner. We flew from Alice Springs to Adelaide in the state of South Australia this afternoon.
South Australia is quite lush with rolling pastures dotted with cows and sheep. We think the cows here are a bit luckier than those at the ranchlands in the Red Centre who have to work at staying alive in barren conditions (and avoiding crazy Americans driving through their rangelands).
From Adelaide we drove southeast and ended up in a small town called Keith. We are staying at Keith Motor Inn, a very small quaint motel along the highway. It is kind of cute.
We have noticed that both large and small cities shut down early in the evening. For example, we stopped at a local grocery store shortly after 6:00 tonight (part of the IGA system) and found it closed. We have modified our travel style to try to stop by about sundown in order to make sure we have lodging and food for the evening. The ladies don’t think that sleeping in the car is a great idea.
On 9/12 our driving was limited and we headed southeast through some beautiful pasture and vineyard land. We stopped at Naracoorte Caves National Park and went spelunking, such as it was. The caves were actually pretty interesting, but the fossil and animatronic prehistoric animal display at the visitor centre was a bit silly. We later went to the town of Mt. Gambier where are staying the night. We are at a Big4 Holiday Park, which is the franchise that we used with the RV (similar to but usually nicer than a KOA). The parks have cabins with inside bathrooms, which we find to be a major plus. We have explored Mt. Gambier a bit, visiting a wildlife park maintained by the city and some overlooks of a couple nice lakes in volcanic craters. The park had a few kangaroos and we even spotted a koala clutching a high branch blowing in the wind. We went to another garden where we handfed fruit to possums (cute little raccoon looking possums and not the ugly ones like at home). The weather here is quite windy and cool. We miss the warmth of the Red Centre.
On 9/13 we drove to Portland. This is a small city in southwest Victoria on the southern Australia coast. We visited some beaches and overlooks, a couple museums, and wandered through the town. People are so friendly here that sometimes we cannot get away from them. As an example, we visited an overlook tower where the ticket man was very excited to hear that we were from Portland, USA. He followed us up the eight or so flights of stairs to tell us his life story. We eventually made a gracious exit. While at the top of the tower, we watched some lawn bowling. You can imagine the excitement. We are staying at a very cute bed and breakfast called Victoria House. On the way to Portland, we saw a couple kangaroos in the wild. We later saw an echidna along the road. We are finally seeing wildlife outside of zoos!

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Photos

Keith Motor Inn
Not a state of the art Comfort Suites, but the only game in town and still quite serviceable.

Cave Girls
Tammy and Kirsten descending into the abyss at Naracoorte Caves National Park.

Cave Man and Cave Girl
Dean and Kirsten in the cave.

Blue Lake
Blue Lake at Mt. Gambier.

Tammy feeding possum
These possums at a sinkhole in Mt. Gambier really liked our fruit.

Comments

[Stacy]

WOW!
It sounds like you are really having an awesome time and seeing so many fun and adventurous places. Love the pictures, I almost feel like I'm there! OK, not really, but wish I was. :0) Also, Congrats on 31 years of marital bliss.

[the Juskowiaks]

Have enjoyed "sharing" your adventures!
Hey there, down under -- Sure have been enjoying all the great photos you've been posting and the detailed reports of your progress. Once we gave Anne, Scott and Robin the blog address they have been following along as well. Missed you at Bunco, Tammy. Weather's been gorgeous here. Happy anniversary!